Categorie: Europe

Tehran has accused European signatories of failing to abide by their obligations under the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, warning that the Islamic republic would not be taken advantage-of.

“The deal is not a one-way street and Iran will act accordingly, as we have done so far, by gradually downgrading our commitments,” said Ali Akbar Salehi, director of Iran’s nuclear energy agency.

After meeting with the acting head of the UN nuclear watchdog (IAEA), Cornel Feruta, Salehi stated that Tehran still hopes that the deal can be salvaged and that all parties would uphold the agreement.

The captain’s refusal to accept Spain’s offer [to dock in Spain rather than Italy] fueled suspicion about the financial and political motivations behind the migrant rescues — including efforts by Open Arms and other NGOs to promote open borders by discrediting Salvini’s hardline immigration policies.

“We are facing the umpteenth mockery of the Spanish Open Arms, which for days has been wandering around the Mediterranean for the sole purpose of gathering as many people as possible to bring them always and only to Italy. In all this time they already could have gone back and forth to a Spanish port three times. These NGOs are only political. They are using the immigrants against our country. I will not give up.” — Italian Interior Minister Matteo Salvini.

“Open Arms does not rescue shipwrecked people. If it did, it would take them to the nearest port. What it does is use immigrants as an extortion tool against countries that choose to defend their sovereignty. These fake humanitarian organizations, in the name of solidarity, exploit the good will of many people. But their work is promoted by those who want to destroy the borders of Europe, and only benefits human traffickers.” — Santiago Abascal, leader of the Spanish party Vox.

The [Ipsos] poll also found that a majority of Italians (56%) believe that the NGOs involved in rescuing migrants are motivated by money; only 22% believe they are motivated by humanitarianism.

The data indicates that most of the migrants who arrived in Italy during the first six months of 2019 are economic migrants, not refugees fleeing warzones.

“It is quite clear that when the organized networks that control migrants from Libya throw people into the sea in vessels that lack even the slightest navigability conditions to safely transport them to European ports, what they are doing is deliberately placing them into the legal status of shipwrecked persons. These are not shipwrecks caused by maritime accidents, as contemplated by international law, they are ‘shipwrecks of convenience.’” — José María Ruiz Soroa, distinguished professor of maritime law at the University of the Basque Country.

The Empire’s European castle of vassals is crumbling. Right in front of our eyes. But Nobody seems to see it. The European Union (EU), the conglomerate of vassals – Trump calls them irrelevant, and he doesn’t care what they think about him, they deserve to be collapsing. They, the ‘vassalic’ EU, a group of 28 countries, some 500 million people, with a combined economy of a projected 19 trillion US-dollar equivalent, about the same as the US, have submitted themselves to the dictate of Washington in just about every important aspect of life.

The EU has accepted on orders by Washington to sanction Russia, Venezuela, Iran – and a myriad of countries that have never done any harm to any of the 28 EU member states. The EU has accepted the humiliation of military impositions by NATO – threating Russia and China with ever more and ever more advancing military basis towards Moscow and Beijing, to the point that Brussels’ foreign policy is basically led by NATO.

It was clear from the very get-go that the US sanctions regime imposed on Russia and all the countries refusing to submit to the whims and rules of Washington, directly and via the EU, was hurting the EU economically far more than Russia. This is specifically true for some of the southern European countries, whose economy depended more on trading with Russia and Eurasia than it did for other EU countries.

The ‘sanctions’ disaster really hit the fan, when Trump unilaterally decided to abrogate the “Nuclear Deal” with Iran and reimpose heavy sanctions on Iran and on “everybody who would do business with Iran”. European hydrocarbon giants started losing business. That’s when Brussels, led by Germany started mumbling that they would not follow the US and – even – that they would back European corporations, mainly hydrocarbon giants, sticking to their contractual arrangements they had with Iran.

Too late. European business had lost all confidence in Brussels EU Administration’s feeble and generally untrustworthy words. Many breached their longstanding and, after the Nuclear Deal, renewed contracts with Iran, out of fear of punishment by Washington and lack of trust in Brussel’s protection. Case in point is the French-British petrol giant,

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s visit to France is being hailed as a revolutionary turn in the European Union’s policy toward Moscow. While that would be a step in the right direction, rumors of it might be greatly exaggerated.

Putin and French President Emmanuel Macron certainly seemed all smiles at their meeting in Bregancon on Monday, leading respected international commentator John Laughland to declare that “On every level, the West has now abandoned its earlier hostility to Putin and Russia.”

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The meeting took place just a few days ahead of the G7 summit in France, to which Putin was not invited; Russia has been suspended from the group of industrialized nations since 2014, after the US and UK blamed it for the crisis in Ukraine.

None other than US President Donald Trump said on Tuesday that it would be “much more appropriate to have Russia” back in the G8 again, no doubt triggering every Russia “expert” on three continents.

It is certainly tempting to believe that Macron and Trump have somehow come to realize the wisdom of Putin’s speech at the 2007 Munich Security Conference, in which he warned about the perils of unipolarity, disdain for international law, and US attempts to impose its will on the rest of the world. After all, Trump himself has mused about better relations with Russia and advocated sovereignty over imperialism in his UN speeches.

Yet as the Russian leadership is keenly aware, Western politicians’ words are one thing, and deeds quite another. Even as he talked sovereignty, Trump has doubled down on trying to force Iran, North Korea and Venezuela into submission to US dictates, and his State Department continues to support “moderate rebels” (aka Al-Qaeda terrorists) in Syria. He has also ratcheted up sanctions against Russia started by his predecessor, perhaps pressured by his critics harping on the ‘Russiagate’ conspiracy for years.

The Dalai Lama has warned that ‘the whole of Europe will eventually become a Muslim, African country” unless refugees that have been taken in are not returned to their home countries.

Speaking with the BBC‘s Rajini Vaidyanathan from his home in the mountainous town of McLeod-Ganj in Northern India, the 83-year-old spiritual leader said that while Europe was under an obligation to take in those who need help, they must ultimately be returned to their homelands.

“European countries should take these refugees and give them education and training, and the aim is return to their own land with certain skills,” said the Dalai Lama, adding “A limited number is OK, but the whole of Europe [will] eventually become Muslim country, African country – impossible.”

“Receive them [migrants], help them, educate them, but ultimately they should develop their own country. I think Europe belongs to the Europeans.”

We wonder if virtue-signaling liberals will peel off their “Free Tibet” bumper stickers now that their idol is one pair of Khakis and a tiki-torch away from Europe’s identitarian movement?

The Dalai Lama sought refuge in India, where he has been living in exile with 10,000 Tibetans.

The view from the Dalai Lama’s residence in the northern Indian state of Himachal Pradesh (via BBC)

His monastery – which overlooks the snow-capped peaks of the Dhauladhar range in the Himalayas – is breathtakingly beautiful. But the view is bittersweet.

His life’s cause – to return home – remains a distant dream, even if he insists it may yet happen. “The Tibetan people have trust in me, they ask me [to] come to Tibet,” he says.

But in the next breath he adds that India has also become his “spiritual home”. An implicit acceptance, perhaps, that his goal of an autonomous Tibet is far from reality. –BBC

When asked about President Trump, the Buddhist monk said that he “lacked moral principle” and that the administration’s America first policy is “wrong.”

Italy is in serious trouble financially. This is virtually common knowledge at this point. What isn’t common knowledge is its Euroskeptic government led by Lega’s Matteo Salvini and Five Star Movement’s Luigi Di Maio are preparing an assault on the foundation of the European Union itself to save Italy.

And that assault comes with the most innocuous name. Mini-BOT. Mini-BOTs were originally the idea of former Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis to assist Greece get out of the stranglehold placed on it by the euro.

What is a mini-BOT? It is a small denomination (mini) Bill of Treasury (BOT) that can be issued by, in this case, the Italian government to act as a domestic currency for settling government debts, paying taxes, etc.

It would be a parallel currency which could circulate freely domestically at a discount to the euro which would work as a medium of exchange to reflect the reality of the Italian economy better than the euro does.

The euro’s value is dominated by Germany’s economy. And, in short, by being so the euro overvalues Italy’s labor pool and undervalues Germany’s. Gresham’s Law states under-valued money is hoarded and over-valued spent. In Italy the euro is hoarded. In Germany it is spent. This is why Germany runs such a massive trade surplus against the other members of the euro-zone.

Italy (and Greece, Portugal, Spain and others) need a currency that can circulate to properly support domestic trade.

By mispricing Italian labor via the euro it keeps the goods produced in Italy uncompetitive on the world market. Italy’s central bank can only issue euro-denominated debt which trades at rates far lower than it should, enhancing Germany’s position.

The Italian economy, like Greece’s, is also strangled by the cost of servicing its national debt denominated in euros. This keeps the demand for money within the economy high for debt servicing purposes and its circulation low.

Low circulation equals low trade and a sluggish economy. The EU’s budget rules favor paying off creditors first and tending to the Italian economy second. The ‘austerity’ imposed on euro-zone members, because of this mispricing of both the debt and the euro itself,

The US Department of Energy (DOE) recently renamed US liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports “freedom gas.” But freedom for who? For Europe who already has a cheap and reliable source of natural gas, but is being forced to switch over to more expensive US gas under the threat of sanctions? Certainly not.

Or freedom for Russia who supplies Europe with much of its natural gas to compete openly and fairly with the United States? Most definitely not.

Or is it freedom from competition for the US? Yes, indeed.

It is often contradictory branding that heralds various chapters of US injustice at home (under the draconian “Patriot Act” for example) and abroad, such as during the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq carried out under the dubious name of “Operation Iraqi Freedom.”

Not the Onion

So discredited have US campaigns christened in the name of “freedom” become, that few scarcely believed the US was actually, seriously calling its natural gas exports “freedom gas.” However, it is not a headline torn from the pages of the satirical newspaper “The Onion,” but rather from the US DOE itself.

“Increasing export capacity from the Freeport LNG project is critical to spreading freedom gas throughout the world by giving America’s allies a diverse and affordable source of clean energy. Further, more exports of U.S. LNG to the world means more U.S. jobs and more domestic economic growth and cleaner air here at home and around the globe,” said U.S. Under Secretary of Energy Mark W. Menezes, who highlighted the approval at the Clean Energy Ministerial in Vancouver, Canada. “There’s no doubt today’s announcement furthers this Administration’s commitment to promoting energy security and diversity worldwide.”

Aside from the almost comical reference to “freedom gas,” there is something else revealing about the DOE’s claims of “giving America’s allies a diverse and affordable source of clean energy.”

This is in direct reference to Europe, and Europe’s current imports of Russian gas. Russian gas, delivered by pipelines to Europe will always be cheaper than US liquefied natural gas transported by sea to Europe.

Europe, an “old” colonialist continent, is decaying, and in some places even collapsing. It senses how bad things are going. But it never thinks that it is its own fault.

North America is decaying as well, but there, people are not even used to comparing. They only “feel that things are not going well”. If everything else fails, they simply try to get some second or third job, and just survive, somehow.

On both sides of the Atlantic, the establishment is in panic. Their world is in crises, and the ‘crises’ arrived mainly because several great countries, including China, Russia, Iran, but also South Africa, Turkey, Venezuela, DPRK and the Philippines, are openly refusing to play in accordance with the script drawn in Washington, London and Paris. In these nations, there is suddenly no appetite for sacrificing their own people on the altar of well-being of Western citizens. Several countries, including Venezuela and Syria, are even willing to fight for their independence.

Despite insane and sadistic embargos and sanctions imposed on them by the West; China, Russia and Iran are now flourishing, in many fields doing much better than Europe and North America.

If they are really pushed any further, China, Russia and their allies combined, could easily collapse the economy of the United States; an economy which is built on clay and unserviceable debt. It is also becoming clear that militarily, the Pentagon could never defeat Beijing, Moscow, even Teheran.

After terrorizing the world for ages, the West is now almost finished: morally, economically, socially, and even militarily. It still plunders, but it has no plan to improve the state of the world. It cannot even think in such terms.

It hates China, and every other country that does have progressive, internationalist plans. It smears President Xi Jinping and his brainchild, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), but there is nothing new and exciting that the West is able to offer to the world. Yes, of course, those regime changes, coups, military interventions and theft of natural resources, but anything else? No, silence!

*

During my two weeks long working visit to Europe, in the Czech Republic (now renamed to Czechia), a country that enjoys a higher HDI (Human Development Index defined by UNDP) than Italy or Spain,

Europe would not enjoy the same level of peace and security that it does today if it weren’t for Turkey’s willingness to host waves of refugees pouring in from numerous countries, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has claimed.

“If European countries are living in peace today, it is thanks to Turkey for hosting 4 million refugees,” Erdogan said on Friday, as quoted by Anadolu.

In 2015, the EU agreed to pay Turkey €3 billion ($3.3 billion) in exchange for housing refugees and preventing them from entering the bloc. A year later, a formal deal was reached between Ankara and Brussels, stipulating that all migrants arriving illegally on European shores would be returned to transit country Turkey.

In exchange, the EU promised to speed up deliberations over Turkey’s bid to join the bloc. As part of the deal, Ankara requested an additional €3bn to help cope with the humanitarian crisis.

The two sides have squabbled over exactly how many refugees Turkey hosts – and how much money Ankara needs to care for them. For example, last year the EU claimed that Turkey was holding less than 2 million refugees, while the Turkish government insisted the number was closer to 4 million.

Despite Turkey’s best efforts, in the last few years Europe has been rocked by a series of terrorist attacks, with some attributed to extremists who entered the bloc posing as asylum seekers.

While Ankara and Brussels have locked horns over issues ranging from visa-free travel to press freedoms, some European states have expressed gratitude to Turkey for its role in containing the influx of refugees trying to enter the bloc.

Everyone against everyone else – this is the media image of chaos which is spreading across the Southern shores of the Mediterranean, from Libya to Syria. It is a situation before which even Washington seems powerless. But in reality, Washington is not the sorcerer’s apprentice unable to control the forces now in motion. It is the central motor of a strategy – the strategy of chaos – which, by demolishing entire States, is provoking a chain reaction of conflicts which can be used in the manner of the ancient method of “divide and rule”.

Emerging victorious from the Cold War in 1991, the USA self-appointed themselves as “the only State with power, reach, and influence in all dimensions – political, economic and military – which are truly global”, and proposed to “prevent any hostile power from dominating any region – Western Europe, Eastern Asia, the territories of the ex-Soviet Union, and South-Western Asia (the Middle East) – whose resources could be enough to generate a world power”.

Since then, the United States, with NATO under their command, have fragmented or destroyed by war, one by one, the states they considered to represent an obstacle to their plan for world domination – Iraq, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria and others – while still others are in their sights (among which are Iran and Venezuela).

In the same strategy came the coup d’État in Ukraine under the direction of the USA and NATO, in order to provoke a new Cold War in Europe intended to isolate Russia and reinforce the influence of the United States in Europe.

While we concentrate politico-media attention on the fighting in Libya, we leave in the shadows the increasingly threatening scenario of NATO’s escalation against Russia. The meeting of the 29 Ministers for Foreign Affairs, convened in Washington on 4 April to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the Alliance, reaffirmed, without any proof, that “Russia violated the FNI Treaty by deploying new missiles with a nuclear capacity in Europe”.

One week later, on 11 April, NATO announced that the “update” of the US Aegis “anti-missile defence system”, based at Deveselu in Romania,

In Greece and Spain, the vast majority of in-person purchases are made with cash – 88 and 87 percent respectively. While in Sweden, Denmark and the UK, most items are paid for digitally.

In the report, which focuses on the UK, despite the relatively low share of people relying on cash in their everyday lives, it was found that over 8 million adults – about 17 percent of the population – would struggle to cope in a cashless society.

On Twitter, apparently the US president’s preferred forum to reveal foreign policy and state decisions, Donald Trump asked “Britain, France, Germany and other European allies to take back over 800 ISIS captured in Syria” from 44 countries. Otherwise, Trump will “release them” without specifying where and in which country. The US President is no longer ready to spend time waiting “for others (EU countries) to do their job”.

This is what the US establishment’s foreign policy and relationship with allies are all about. The US asked European, Canadian, Australian and Middle Eastern countries to send troops to Syria to “fight ISIS”. But before that, some years ago, the US asked European countries to allow potential jihadists to travel to Syria and Iraq, and for Saudi Arabia and Jordan to open their prisons and pardon core jihadists in order to reach their favorite destination, the Levant, to destroy the Syrian state and create a “failed state” scenario.

But their wishes did not come true and President Bashar al-Assad didn’t fall in 3 to 6 months as predicted in 2011. Today the world is facing a new puzzle: what should be done with those the West helped reach Syria in order to terrorize, rape, and murder the people of Syria, who now want to return to their countries of origin? It is obvious the US establishment is unwilling to help Europe deal with their human refuse who joined ISIS at America’s request.

Up to now thousands of ISIS members have managed to return to Europe and much more to their Middle Eastern, Asian and African countries of origin. These are fighters, few formerly incarcerated in their countries of origin, who answered the call and reached Syria and Iraq with the help of western and allied intelligence services to wage jihad and join the Caliphate of an “Islamic State”.

They traveled to the Levant for various reasons: to join a family member, to join friends, love of adventure, the adrenaline of carrying weapons and killing,

A Janus specter is haunting Europe: its two thousand year ‘civilization’, and the challenge of re-imagining it.

The presence, on a relatively small piece of real estate of several dozen tribes, each with their own language and successive versions of history, guaranteed that they would often be at odds: over the centuries, under the watchful eye of God, kings fought over territory and religion.

Inevitably, kings having been replaced by media cutouts, Europe was faced with an assault on its carefully preserved monuments and richly tended cityscapes that the Enlightenment had not foreseen. Individuals who worship Mohamed instead of Christ are less likely to live out productive lives than enemies of kings who were condemned to exile or the guillotine — or even those who over-borrowed, ending in debtor’s prison.

Notwithstanding its geography featuring rivers and other natural boundaries, the Eurasian Peninsula, as I have been calling it for the last five years has been inclined toward competition and strife. In the early twentieth century, as ‘progress’ made fighting ever more attractive than cooperating, the various kings begged far flung descendants to intervene. Awed by royalty, which they had banished, Americans felt duty bound to help the ‘old countries’, seeing also the benefits to be derived. After putting things right, they hoped in vain that an overarching system would prevent new crises, but their ’grandfathers’ proved hopelessly senile, so they decided to exercise direct oversight.

Inevitably, the reverse colonization of Europe by the United States resulted in Europe’s participation in American wars against its own former colonies, it’s leaders failing to realize these would result in masses of racially and religiously ‘different’ people flocking to its shores. Europeans had created economic construct to avoid clashes, however without an overarching political system, decades of rule from Brussels could only exacerbate tribalism. (A recent report on France 24 showed that students benefitting from the Erasmus Exchange Program are the exception.)

Although it produced the best crop of thinkers since the Greeks, the Enlightenment scarcely reached the Eastern Europeans as they resisted the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Third Reich and Communism. Unsurprisingly, no sooner integrated into ‘the West’, they rejected it for failing to defend their Christian values, flirting with atheism in the name of individual rights.

The Duran’s Alex Christoforou and Editor-in-Chief Alexander Mercouris discuss the US suspension of its participation in the INF Treaty with Russia, and the announcement made that Russia is beginning the process of fully withdrawing from the treaty in response to the US pullout, which will be completed in six months.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov stated that Moscow would give a “mirror response” to all US moves related to the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty.

In a flash, the US has scrapped the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, which safeguarded Europe and the world from a deadly US-Russia arms race. This is particularly bad news for Europeans.

Russia must be feeling a lot like the Native Indians these days with regards to treaties signed with the duplicitous Americans. For the second time in as many decades, the US has gone back on its word, removing another pillar from the global arms reduction architecture.

The Trump administration, in its infinite wisdom, announced on the weekend it would freeze US participation in the INF “for 180 days,” which, from a military perspective, must be interpreted to mean forever. In the spirit of reciprocity, Vladimir Putin, expressing regret that Russia “could not save” the Cold War treaty, said he would be forced to follow suit.

The Russian leader emphasized, however, that Moscow would not deploy intermediate or smaller range weapons “until the same type of American weapons” were placed in Europe or elsewhere in the world.

This latest ratcheting up of tensions between Moscow and Washington was wholly avoidable – that is, if avoiding confrontation is a goal of the US. Clearly, it is not. The unpredictable hotheads now dictating foreign policy in the Trump administration, particularly National Security Advisor John Bolton, a veteran hawk who the Washington Post recently called a “serial arms control killer,” have somehow concluded that playing a game of nuclear chicken on the European continent with Russia is the best way to resolve bilateral issues.

A century ago, Freud’s double nephew, Edward Bernays, pioneered the field of public relations. He realized that the Average Joe is irrational and subject to a ‘herd instinct‘—which could be controlled by what he called ‘crowd psychology’.

At around the same time, a British geographer, Sir Halford Mackinder, having realized that the Eurasian landmass, linked to Africa, was the world’s most valuable real estate, dubbed it the World Island with Russia as its Heartland. He designated Britain and Japan as Offshore Islands and the Western Hemisphere and Australia as Outlying Islands. In The Heartland Theory, he declared that “He who controls Eastern Europe will control the Heartland, Whoever rules the Heartland, will rule the World Island, and whoever rules the World Island, will rule the world.”

The ‘long twentieth century’ can be seen as a successful Bernaysian campaign by the United States to prove Mackinder wrong by following Bernay’s recipe. If these efforts are ultimately defeated, the twenty-first century will be Mackinder’s Revenge.

Political observers view Europe as a fractious place, whose last series of wars stemmed roughly from the conflict between left and right. Currently, however, theoretical categories may be uniting against ‘outsiders’, as the left-leaning daily Liberation recently posited. It claims that France’s various ‘lefts’ are non-plussed by evidence that prominent Yellow Vesters Facebook pages signal approval of Marine le Pen’s National Front (now known under the less bellicose designation ‘National Rally’). “Libé” says one such leader confessed to having been mistaken, due to his previous apolitical stance, now realizing that all politicians lie.

What if this realization resulted in a drop in support for the far right party, the paper asks? Many people voted for Le Pen out of frustration or solitude; what if they now realize that behind all the xenophobia and identity issues, its still about social conditions, pitting those who can get to the end of the month against those who can’t, whatever their skin color or religious affiliations. According to Libé, early entries in the Cahiers des Doleances (the record of grievances inspired by a feature of the French revolution) would appear to confirm this reading of the Yellow Vest uprising. Finally, in a typical French need to claim exceptionalism,

I am pleased to be here today at the invitation of the Center for Geostrategic Studies in Belgrade, here in the European Parliament.

As a senior French officer, I served in Macedonia and then in Kosovo in the first half of 1999. When I was assigned to the French Special Operations Command, I was appointed as the head of the joint special forces group that intervened before the French KFOR Brigade’s deployment under the command of NATO.

It is for this reason that I am speaking today, having published a few years ago a book with a deliberately provocative title: “Europe has died in Pristina”. If you have not read it, I recommend you to do it! There you will find my testimony on this tragic period.

If one speaks of Kosovo, its full name Kosovo-Metohija, it is indeed not possible to ignore the past of this region, the ancient past, the cultural and religious history, the history of the Serbian and Orthodox identity always present through the innumerable and very old monuments, churches, Serbian monasteries found throughout the province, but also the recent past, and especially the events of the 1990s that culminated in 1999 during the war that was imposed on Serbia, with the support of NATO and the European Union to the Albanian KLA rebellion.

It is in this context that I myself intervened in Kosovo at the head of French special forces under British command.

What struck me in Kosovo in 1999 was, first of all, the very large misinformation that preceded and justified the NATO aggression.

Indeed, it is because the word “genocide” was pronounced by the American president Bill Clinton and his secretary of State Madeleine Albright – who gave the fatal and false figure of “100,000 dead” in Kosovo – that the NATO will allow itself to attack Serbia in March 1999, after the unacceptable demands made by the Allies to the Serbs during the Rambouillet negotiations which forced them to refuse the Diktat the Allies wanted to impose on them.

However, it will be seen after the 1999 war that the number of the victims from all origins,

“I don’t care about Europe,” declared US President Donald Trump this week during his White House cabinet’s first meeting of the new year.

The American president probably revealed more about the true nature of US-European relations than he intended.

Trump was speaking in the context of American military involvement with Europe, as well as trade and other issues. He was reiterating the tedious mantra that the US is allegedly being “taken advantage of” by European allies by not spending more on their military budgets.

It was the usual rambling, barely articulate fallacy from Trump who portrays the inherent military profligacy of American corporate capitalism not as a destructive vice, but as a supposed virtuous cause of “protection” for allies and the rest of the world. In short, delusional American exceptionalism.

But it was Trump’s bluntly stated contempt for European allies that was notable. In a quip to a question about his reported unpopularity in Europe, the president said he didn’t care what Europeans think. A few seconds later, in a betrayal of his arrant egotistical state of mind, Trump turned around and claimed that he would be popular if he stood in an election in Europe!

Ironically, though, perhaps we should be grateful to Trump for his brash outspokenness. By dissing Europe with such contemptuous disregard, he lays bare the true face of Washington’s relations with the old continent.

Past American presidents have been adept at presenting the transatlantic connection as a putative “strategic partnership” – as most clearly manifested by the US-led NATO military alliance. Trump’s former Defense Secretary James Mattis, who resigned in protest over policies, was of this conventional transatlantic mould. Mattis repeatedly talked up the importance of maintaining strong bonds with allies.

However, decades of transatlantic rhetoric has often served to conceal the real relationship between Washington and Europe. The reality is the Europeans are not partners. They are vassals.

Successive European governments and the European Union have continually permitted their countries to serve as bases for American military forces, including in the past, nuclear weapons pointed at Russia. Those missiles may return to European soil,

President Donald Trump’s announcement of an imminent withdrawal of US troops from northeastern Syria summoned a predictable paroxysm of outrage from Washington’s foreign policy establishment. Former Secretary of State and self-described “hair icon” Hillary Clinton perfectly distilled the bipartisan freakout into a single tweet, accusing Trump of “isolationism” and “playing into Russia and Iran’s hands.”

Michelle Flournoy, the DC apparatchik who would have been Hillary’s Secretary of Defense, slammedthe pull-out as “foreign policy malpractice,” while Hillary’s successor at the State Department, John Kerry, threw bits of red meat to the Russiagate-crazed Democratic base by branding Trump’s decision “a Christmas gift to Putin.” From the halls of Congress to the K Street corridors of Gulf-funded think tanks, a chorus of protest proclaimed that removing US troops from Syria would simultaneously abet Iran and bring ISIS back from the grave.

Yet few of those thundering condemnations of the president’s move seemed able to explain just why a few thousand U.S. troops had been deployed to the Syrian hinterlands in the first place. If the mission was to destroy ISIS, then why did ISIS rise in the first place? And why was the jihadist organization still festering right in the midst of the U.S. military occupation?

Too many critics of withdrawal had played central roles in the Syrian crisis to answer these questions honestly. They had either served as media cheerleaders for intervention, or crafted the policies aimed at collapsing Syria’s government that fueled the rise of ISIS. The Syrian catastrophe was their legacy, and they were out to defend it at any cost.

Birthing ISIS From the Womb of Regime Change

During the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, Clinton, Kerry, and the rest of the Beltway blob lined up reflexively behind George W. Bush. The insurgency that followed the violent removal of Iraq’s Ba’athist government set the stage for the declaration of the first Islamic State by Abu Musab Zarqawi in 2006. Five years later, with near-total consent from Congress, Hillary enthusiastically presided over NATO’s assault on Libya, cackling with glee when she learned that the country’s longtime leader, Moammar Gaddafi, had been sodomized with a bayonet and shot to death by Islamist insurgents — “We came,

Kiselyov is excellent again here, nailing the truth about how decrepit Europe is these days.

He thinks the political chaos the worst “since the times of WWII”. Merkel, Macron, and May are all in serious trouble, and unable to lead.

Actually, Europe’s political landscape hasn’t been in such a sad state since the times of WWII. See for yourself, on the background of the recent events in France.

The rating of the French people’s trust in President Macron has hit a record low of 18%. Nearly as low as Poroshenko’s. 70% of the French are not content with the government’s policy. It means that France doesn’t have a leader. Bending one finger.

The UK is also without a leader. Never before has Theresa May’s cabinet been in such a tough position. After her aligning the Brexit agreement with the EU, four ministers, associated with the Brexit, left the Cabinet to express their protest. And now, when the British Parliament has started to discuss the document, the MPs blamed Theresa May for lying and hiding the truth about the conditions of the UK’s exit from the EU.

Theresa May has lied before. For example, about Novichok. But for some reason, the MPs got stirred only now. The most blazing speech on the lie belonged to the leader of the parliamentary faction the Scottish National Party, Ian Blackford.

Ian Blackford: “Is it time that the prime minister takes responsibility hiding the facts on her Brexit deal? The prime minister is misleading the house inadvertently or otherwise. The issue of the legal advice on the Brexit showed the facts the government tried to hide.”

The Scot’s anger is shared by a member of the Democratic Unionist Party, Jim Shannon.

Jim Shannon: “The government voted for Northern Ireland to become a mute victim of Great Britain.”

For now, we’re not analyzing this complicated document on the Brexit, which was preliminarily aligned with the EU. We’re simply talking about the reaction Theresa May’s opponents have expressed toward it.

But the reaction was that, on Tuesday, the majority of the MPs in the House of Commons of the British parliament voted to investigate the issue of the Cabinet’s disrespect toward the legislative body.

In recent decades, the US Constitution’s clause that requires a congressional declaration of war before invading any country, has been ignored. Furthermore, ever since 2012 and the passage by Congress of the Magnitsky Act sanctions against Russia, economic sanctions by the US Government have been imposed against any company that fails to comply with a US-imposed economic sanction; a company can even be fined over a billion dollars for violating a US economic sanction.

And, so, sanctions are now the way that the US Congress actually does authorize a war — the new way, no longer the way that’s described in the US Constitution. However, in the economic-sanctions phase of a war — this initial phase — the war is being imposed directly against any company that violates a US-ordered economic sanction, against Russia, Iran, or whatever target-country the US Congress has, by means of such sanctions, actually authorized a war by the US to exist — a ‘state of war’ to exist.

For the US Congress, the passage of economic sanctions against a country thus effectively serves now as an authorization for the US President to order the US military to invade that country, if and when the President decides to do so. No further congressional authorization is necessary (except under the US Constitution). This initial phase of a war penalizes only those other nations’ violating companies directly — not the target-country. Though the US Government punishes the violating corporation, the actual target is the targeted (sanctioned) country. Sanctions are being used to strangle that target. The fined companies are mere ‘collateral damage’, in this phase of America’s new warfare. In this phase, which is now the standard first phase of the US Government’s going-to-war, the US Government is coercing corporations to join America’s economic war, against the given targeted country — in this case, it’s a war against Russia; Russia is the country that the US Government wants to strangle, in this particular instance.

On Tuesday, 11 December, the US House of Representatives voted unanimously (no member objected), by voice vote — unrecorded so that nobody can subsequently be blamed for anything — that President Donald Trump should impose penalties,

Named as the centre-left’s candidate for the next EU Commission President, Frans Timmermans announced he would crush conservative governments in Europe, insisting that the continent uniting with Africa is “a matter of destiny”.

Timmermans, who currently sits as the Commission’s first vice-president, was nominated to lead the Party of European Socialists (PES) in next May’s elections by delegates at the EU Parliament grouping’s annual congress in Lisbon on Saturday.

The former Dutch defence minister, who has previously claimed Europe could “not remain a place of peace and freedom” unless mass immigration-related “diversity” is imposed throughout the continent including across “even the most remote corners”, has notably spent much of his time as President Jean-Claude Juncker’s deputy ordering eastern EU states to open their borders to third world migrants.

Packed with references to “1940”, “Nazi Germany”, and “never again”, he used his speech at the PES congress to make clear that, under his leadership, the European Commission would have zero tolerance for nations which reject any part of the globalist, ‘progressive’ agenda including third world migration.

Democracy revolves around “respect for minorities” and allowing unfettered and unlimited access to foreign-funded NGOs with agendas hostile to the will of their populations, stated Timmermans, before vowing to oust the popular governments of Poland and Hungary.

He said: “I want to say to our friends from Poland, I want to make a solemn pledge to you today: I will never abandon the Polish people in their struggle for democracy, freedom and the rule of law.

Poland: Total Collapse for Pro-EU Opposition As Support for Patriotic Conservative Govt Surges https://t.co/fhabKt5zOX

“And you know why I am confident that we are going to win?” he asked, going on to proclaim it would not be due to support from globalist governments in Spain, France, and Germany but instead “because of the Polish people”.

“Because the Polish people want to be Europeans,” contended Timmermans, adding: “Young Poles going in the streets with that beautiful blue flag with yellow stars do that because that flag stands for values they believe in. Because that flag is who they are.”

More than 100,000 people arrived in Europe by crossing the Mediterranean Sea, since the beginning of 2018, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM). “As of November 4, 100,630 migrants and refugees arrived in Europe by sea,” TASS quoted spokesman Joel Millman as saying in Geneva on Tuesday. For the fifth consecutive year, the number of arrivals exceeds the 100,000 mark, he said, adding that in previous years this threshold was reached much earlier in the year. At least 1989 people died or were missing in the Mediterranean Sea this year, he said. Since the beginning of the year, Spain received 49,013 migrants and refugees. It is followed by Greece with 27,715 arrivals, Italy (22,167), Malta (989) and Cyprus (746). During this period in 2016, about 340,000 people arrived to Europe via this route.

The latest data from Euro Stat for September 2018 demonstrates the complete failure of the ECB and its Quantitative Easing. The Euro area (EA19) seasonally-adjusted unemployment rate came in at 8.1% in September 2018, which was down slightly from the year/year perspective of about 8.9%. This above all proves that the entire theory of the Quantity of Money is bogus. It also demonstrates that the Austerity Policy of Europe has caused unbelievable social damage resulting in what is being called the Lost Generation with unemployment among the youth reach 60% in Southern Europe.

Without a COMPLETE rejection of Austerity and a COMPLETE overhaul of the European Union structure, there is absolutely NO HOPE what so ever of Europe coming out of the death spiral. This will only get worse as politicians, with ZERO experience in trading markets, will debate and refuse to accept responsibility for their actions. Then you opened the doors to refugees when unemployment is at a serious high? And you wonder why there will be civil unrest and backlash against migrants?

As Einstein pointed out, you cannot possibly solve our problems with the very same thinking process that was used to create them.

While the Trump administration’s decision to end the Intermediate Range Nuclear (INF) treaty has certainly sent the world into a ‘strategic shock’, the biggest shock is certainly in Europe, which was always the primary beneficiary of this treaty. It had seen hundreds of missiles removed from its soil and also those pointed towards it, changing the continent’s security environment considerably as this treaty marked a major benchmark in terms of ending the cold war as well. Now, the end of this treaty means that Europe has once again become vulnerable to a nuclear showdown between Russia and the US any time in future. This vulnerability certainly requires some crucial decision. Therefore, an important question is: how will Europe adjust to this new strategic reality?

For now, there is clearly a divide in Europe over how it sees US withdrawal. While the UK has announced that they ‘stand’ with Trump, Germany sees this development differently and its statement expresses regret about the US decision to abandon “an important element of arms control that especially serves European interests.” In the absence of robust missile programs, therefore, will the US ‘force’ countries like Germany, whom Trump has already accused of not contributing their due share to NATO, to place US made weapons in Europe? In such a scenario, we might see another rupture in US-EU relations since the mood in Europe isn’t really ‘favourable’ towards Trump, and the possible deployment of US weapons in Europe today will most probably be seen as ‘over-dependence’ over the US than as a reflection of true strategic alliance.

On top of it is the fact that no European leader, unlike the US presidents, has ever publicly criticised the Russians for any violation of the INF treaty, a fact that will make it difficult for EU countries to simply subscribe to the US version of things and frame policies accordingly. Also, the fact that EU and the US have developed difference over a number of crucial issues stands to make an impact on what the EU does in the post-INF scenario.

An important question, in this context, is also that of EU’s own relations with Russia. Undoubtedly, EU’s relations with Russia are fundamentally different from what these relations were like during Cold War.

Merkel has been the face of Europe – good, bad, or indifferent. Germany has been the major economy in Europe with France a distant second. We must understand that the fate of the Euro hinges on this position of Merkel. She has been a staunch supporter of austerity and the Green and AfD are rising BECAUSE of Merkel’s immigration policy. Instead of recognizing she may a major mistake and address it instantly, she has done the typical politician maneuver – blame everyone else and deny it was her policy at fault.

I cannot stress enough that the political instability within Europe, is a critical factor behind the capital flows that can push the dollar to unbelievable highs. Our unique capital flows analysis which we invented is backed by raw data which is contributed from proprietary sources worldwide which allow us to really see the trends without opinions or myopic domestic analysis. All of these people who keep talking about how the dollar has to crash are so caught up in old world theories that have NEVER been correct and have not just failed their analysis of things such as gold, but they have failed the central bankers on an even grander scale. This is why even central bankers attend the WEC. There is a much higher plane of financial analysis that we must respect and come to grips with BECAUSE we are all in this together. NO politician can even pretend to be in charge of the economy and make promises that are far beyond their control because NOBODY can go against the global trend. PLAIN & SIMPLE!!!!!!!

A special report is going out this week for the attendees of the WEC. This is on the Economic Confidence Model and the major November 2018 Convergence that is on our doorstep. The consolidation is about to end. So buckle up – we will be on our way to something really extraordinary that no domestic analysis will ever see coming.

In that respect, it will be like the 1987 Crash that was caused by external factors that never appeared in domestic numbers or analysis. It was so significant, that is when the Presidential Commission was compelled to request all our international research to understand how external factors overpower domestic.

I picture Europe now as Greece during the Roman Republic (before its conquest). isolated, corrupted to the core. And the US as the new Roman Republic. Will it become an empire after 2032?

Marius was the man of the people and in the end, he was defeated by Sylla (Senate if I m correct). But Marius’ idea was carried on by Cesar. Was he a socialist before the hour?

as a European, which side is the safest to pick when we will be dragged in the conflict???

thanks again!

best regards from France

ANSWER: Ironically, people may think history is just the past. The next time you watch Star Wars, look closer. It is about this very struggle of the people versus the Empire. Instead of swords, they fight with laser swords. If you look at the royal guard, they had cloaks and helmets much as the Romans were dressed. This is actually a saga that is repeated time and again throughout history. Pericles in Athens was charged and put on trial as they are trying to do with Trump. Today, we call it the Deep States. In Roman times, Caesar fought against the corrupt Senate who was the political party known as the Optimates.

You are correct, Marius lost. His coins refected the anti-establishment. You can see the female head of Italia, for which he was fighting. Caesar’s reputation has been distorted by the corrupt Optimates such as Cato and Cicero. Caesar was a man of the people, not a socialist, just an anti-establishment from the perspective of corruption. He too had to flee Rome under the dictatorship of Sulla who would have killed him much as Stalin killed anyone who might oppose him.

The aspect of Europe is the total failure to really integrate the 28 member states. It is effectively a dictatorship without accepting the responsibilities. The EU dictates what the budgets should be of each member under the pretense of maintaining the Euro. The USA does not have that structure. The Feds, nor the Federal Reserve, care about the budgets of each 50 state.

In his yearly speech to his country’s ambassadors, French President Emanuel Macron echoed recent remarks by Germany’s Angela Merkel that Europe can no longer count on the US to guarantee its safety and sovereignty, but must fend for itself. Most significantly, he added: “We must understand the consequences of the end of the Cold War and reconsider our alliances.”

As one French commentator on France 24 pointed out, Macron doesn’t want to cut ties with the US, but he does want to modify them. Pointing out that France will chair next year’s G7, to be followed by the US the year after, meaning that the two countries must work closely, the French president’s casual remark masked a bombshell: France will emphasize dialogue with China India Russia – maybe even invite them to attend on the second day.

It will be remembered that last year, President Trump was roundly chastised for suggesting that Russia be reinstated into the G7, making it once again the G8. If Macron has his way, Europe’ will do what the American president was not permitted to do — never mind that at the time, they obediently followed America’s hawks rather than its president.

It would appear that contrary to what I wrote in 2016, Europe is finally getting its act together, at least with respect to Russia, thanks to the effect America’s anti-Russian sanctions are having on its economy. That decision, which President Trump has been unable to undo, is achieving what seventy years of soft subservience to US diktats failed to do: begin to fray the leash that has tethered Europe to the US for seventy years. As long as US-imposed neo-liberal policies only hurt the European welfare state, they were supinely accepted. But sanctions against Russia affect agriculture and industry’s bottom lines, and since Trump is powerless to rescind them, Europe has finally got up the courage to ignore them.

The problem is that while it has made giant strides toward liberating itself from American hegemony, Europe has made less progress in defeating its older enemy: intolerance. Centuries of mutual enmity between competing rulers sandwiched together on the relatively small Eurasian peninsula appeared to have faded under multi-national rule from Brussels. However, this had barely been achieved when old demons slipped through the cracks: anti-Semitism has largely been replaced by US-inspired loyalty to Israel,

The European Central Bank, ECB, is at the heart of the failure to stabilize Europe’s economy since the 2008 global crisis. It is a central element as well in the institutional arrangement since the creation of the Euro that has allowed northern Europe economies and banks, especially Germany, to skew economic growth for itself at the expense of the rest of most of the European periphery, especially its southern tier.

In 2018 the ECB has announced it will discontinue its 30 trillion euro monthly subsidization of the financial system by QE bond buying, followed by an attempt to recover the more than 2.5 trillion excess liquidity injections (’free money’) it has prodced as a consequence of its QE program since March 2015. But with interest rates rising in the US, and the Euro economy growth slowing once again, it is unlikely the ECB will discontinue its QE for very long, if at all, and certainly will fail to recover the 2.5 trillion free money it has injected since 2015.

Europe’s financial system will thus remain on ‘free money’ life support for the foreseeable future. What follows is a major 9K word excerpt from my 2017 book, ‘Central Bankers at the End of Their Rope’, chapter 11 entitled ‘European Central Bank Under German Hegemony’. The ECB’s current chair, Mario Draghi–a member of the notorious ‘Group of 30’ biggest Europe capitalists, bankers and their politicians that determine Europe policy behind closed doors–is scheduled to leave in 2018. What will his successor do as Europe stagnates once again and the global economy slows and heads for another recession or worse?

To read the complimentary chapter on the European Central Bank from my book, ‘Central Bankers at the End of Their Ropes: Monetary Policy and the Coming Depression’, Clarity Press, August 2017, click here.

Disclaimer: The contents of this article are of sole responsibility of the author(s). The Centre for Research on Globalization will not be responsible for any inaccurate or incorrect statement in this article. The Centre of Research on Globalization grants permission to cross-post Global Research articles on community internet sites as long the source and copyright are acknowledged together with a hyperlink to the original Global Research article.

As it’s been officially confirmed by both Washington and Moscow, Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin are going to hold an official meeting in mid-July. This will be their third in-person meeting even though both leaders have made statements about how they have a positive working relationship and there’s reports that they would often hold phone conversations.

As it’s been pointed out by The Nation, every single American president after Roosevelt held at the very least one summit with his Soviet or Russian counterpart, while other had multiple ones, including Eisenhower, Reagan and George Bush senior. Those summits pursued a number of goals, including attempts to solidify a mutual national–security partnership between the leaders of the two states, typically on behalf of improving relations; to enhance both leaders’ political standing at home and in the world; to send a message to their respective elites that attempts at sabotaging the leader’s détente policy will not be tolerated; to spread a positive media message to gain more popular support at home. It goes without saying that summits had various results, both those that can be described as positive and negative ones.

The absolute majority of political analysts agree that these days Washington’s approach to Russia reminds of a man walking along the cliff edge. The above mentioned The Nation notes that the White House administration is at odds with Mueller’s probe into Trump’s alleged collusion with Russia. Reportedly Mueller has even sought to interrogate President Trump. At the same time, momentum is building ahead of November’s midterm elections, with leaders from both parties warning about the risks of further “Russian meddling,” which makes this “leadership meeting at the top” unprecedented in this regard as well.

However, it’s been noted that in Russia there is widespread skepticism about the prospects of the forthcoming Trump-Putin meeting. It seems that local analysts are convinced that Trump is incapable of bringing anything to the table that can be of interest to Moscow. The predominant mood is that the US president remains a hostage to the unanimously anti-Russian Washington establishment and that any deal that Moscow can strike with him won’t be worth the paper that it’s written on.

In turn, the New York Times points out that the Trump-Putin summit that would presumably focus on the present state of American-Russian relations has already stirred anxieties in Europe against the backdrop of Trump’s ongoing clashes with the states that used to be regarded as trusted allies of Washington,

The world events of the past days are significant far beyond the apparent divide within the G7 industrial nations. If we imagine the planet as a giant electric force field, the lines of flux are in dramatic reordering as the post-1945 global dollar-based system comes to its disordered end phase. Europe’s political elites are currently split between rationality and irrationality. The developments to the East however are drawing more and more force and we are seeing the early phases of what might be called a geopolitical polarity reversal within the EU from West to East. The latest developments across Eurasia including the Middle East, Iran and above all between Russia and China are gaining in importance as Washington offers only war, whether trade war, sanctions war, terror war or kinetic war.

The spectacle of a US President tweeting about its long-standing NATO ally and bordering country, Canada, openly calling the Canadian Prime Minister “dishonest and weak,” and threatening new import tariffs for cars imported from Canada, is from all appearances not some whim of an erratic US President but rather a calculated strategy of putting all US allies off balance. It comes after Washington unilaterally tore up the Iran nuclear agreement to the dismay of Europe, Russia and China as well as Iran. On top of that the US announced new trade war tariffs on EU aluminum and steel in open violation of WTO agreements.

No more Mr Nice Guy

If we take these actions as symptoms of something deeper, we need only to look at the exploding US debt levels as I have noted before. The latest Trump tax legislation will bring an estimated $1 trillion in annual Federal budget deficits for the next decade, added to the current $21 trillion Federal debt. Household private debt is at levels higher than before the 2007 financial crisis. Corporate debt, including junk bond or “below investment grade” debt, is sky high owing to a decade of Fed near zero interest rates.

There is another element to the actual US economic situation little noted. According to a recent study by the USA Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, while average family income in comparison with many other countries appears nominally high, the reality of fixed costs such as food,